La Principessa
by Morosetintedglasses
Summary: Futurefic. After Will's unexpected death before their marriage, and her father's fatal apoplexy, a pregnant Elizabeth has only one option to protect her inheritance and her reputation: marrying Lord Beckett. Dark. Iconoclastic comedy. CB ES, JS ES, JN ES
1. A Banquet of Consequences

Chapter 1: A Banquet of Consequences

_Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.--Robert Louis Stevenson_

"I must confess, Miss Swann, that I derive no small measure of satisfaction from your predicament."

Hope dropped to the floor, stillborn and bloody. Not to mention the use of her family name chafed like steel wool up her back.

"Although I have fantasized about this moment…_extensively_, I never dared imagine that I would have the opportunity to repay you in full for the kindness you have accorded me."

"I don't understand—"

"—Let me explain. As I was rotting away in that godforsaken shithole of Tortuga, squandering my savings on whatever piss that would warm my blood, and wallowing in what I _hoped_ was my own filth, I dreamed of killing the men responsible for my disgrace. I dreamed drunk dreams, raving like a lunatic on my own rum-inflated sense of invincibility. I dreamed of hanging Jack Sparrow for taking my life and murdering William Turner for taking the one thing that made that life endurable. Every night I plotted, all at once mad and exhilarated and drank more, fueling the fires of retribution, until my temper had become so unruly that I was ejected from the tavern. I stumbled down dark alleys daring any passerby to brawl—until I passed out in the embrace of the squalid streets. I woke in the afternoon and started again, dreading sobriety and the cold emptiness that comes with lucidity. So long as I was drunk, I was immune to the consequences, or failing that, was too sloshed to care. They say that if you try to drink you problems away, you're bound to wake up next to them—well, I decided to never wake up.

For six months I stumbled through a drunken haze trying to forget you. I was going to die, and I'm not certain that I cared—alcohol poisoning, murder, disease—they cling to a man like his shadow in Tortuga. Then one night, who graces the port but Jack Sparrow himself. At last, it was the moment I had been waiting for. I signed on to his crew, prepared to kill him at my first opportunity and bring his head to Port Royal stuck fast to the bowsprit. Fortunately for Mr. Sparrow, you also joined the crew that evening. For a moment, I abandoned all desire to murder him, because I had you again. I had the opportunity to win you. I was no longer a stiff, phlegmatic naval officer—I was a man, a man who would love you without reserve.

You were never some insipid ornament of a woman—as much vexation as it caused for your father—you had a mind and a will, and you needed a man who would foster your freedom, not repress it. That was my error, Miss Swan, you wanted more than freedom, you wanted thrills—and one man would never be part of that arrangement. Not myself, not even Mr. Turner. I saw it, that afternoon aboard the _Pearl_. The hitherto respectable Elizabeth Swann creaming her golden knickers for Jack Sparrow whilst her fiancé was being held captive on the _Flying Dutchman_. It was then that I realized that the cause of my misfortunes was neither Mr. Turner nor Mr. Sparrow—it was you."

"Me? But how could I--"

"—I was a promising young officer of great expectations. Commodore in His Majesty's Royal Navy at thirty four, on the fast-track for Admiralty by forty. And I was an honorable man. The only chink in my armor was you—and you took the liberty of using that to your full advantage. You made me believe that you loved me, only so that I would rescue your lover. I lost half of my crew at the _Isla de Muerta_ because of your selfishness, and I know you lament that I was not among them. Ah yes, I know what you wanted. That your fiancé be tragically cut down by invulnerable pirates in the melee, in order that you might be spared the inconvenience of breaking it off yourself (or worse, actually marrying the prat) leaving you free to pursue your intentions with Mr. Turner. My God, you nearly lost your own father in the battle. Were you so blinded with infatuation that you lost all regard for others? How would those penniless widows feel if informed that they lost their husbands so that a silly girl could indulge her lust for a blacksmith's apprentice? Or those fatherless children with no prospects, how would they react to the news that said girl's heart abandoned this blacksmith's apprentice in his darkest hour—for a Pirate! You don't love, Miss Swann, you want. Even Mr. Sparrow, I know you could never love a scalawag such as him, but you want what he represents—recklessness, adventure, hedonism. Ah yes, you thought you wanted Mr. Turner, but that was just a bit of adolescent rebellion mixed with a heady dose of lust, and Jack Sparrow proved a far more potent purveyor of that, did he not?

Even after the debacle aboard the _Dauntless_, I managed to save face. I apprehended a notorious pirate along with his entire crew, further securing the safety of commerce in the Caribbean. He was to hang, and I was to be vindicated. Then, Mr. Turner attempted an ill-conceived and rather bungled rescue attempt, and I had him and Mr. Sparrow inescapably surrounded by marines—but you intervened. I have no qualms about bayoneting Mr. Turner if he stands between a known fugitive and the bayonet, but I cannot if you are between it and Mr. Turner. The Commodore in me should have arrested and hanged the lot of you, regardless of his personal feelings. But you—you were that one person who could break down my well-schooled stoicism and you used it to manipulate me. And look what happened!—cashiered out of the navy, no money, no prospects. Certainly, I have been pardoned for my crimes, but I will never be restored to my life.

A privateer, or a "gentleman pirate" as they call me. They praise me in the papers, but they won't have me at their tables or courting their daughters. I've no hope of showing my face in respectable society again. The irony of it all is that I must live by the means of the men I once hunted. I'm a pariah, a disgrace, fit only for the company of whores and rogues.

It is for these reasons, Miss Swann, that every day since I returned to Port Royal I have dreamed of making you suffer as thoroughly and cruelly as you did me. And now to find you, betrothed dead, father dying, unable to inherit, quick with child out of wedlock, and on the cusp of losing your fortune, reputation and prospects, asking me to ensure that these remain intact by marrying you. Well, if nothing else this illustrates the little regard in which you hold me. You are paying me the tremendous compliment of assuming that this is it for me, that no one else will want me, ever. And the only marriage I can hope to enter would be a loveless, sexless union created only so that the lady who disgraced me might be saved from disgrace herself? Thank you. You have robbed me of all I held dear, excepting my dignity, but apparently you mean to take that as well. I find myself in a position to ruin you as thoroughly as you ruined me and for this reason, I must decline your petition for marriage with no lack of personal satisfaction. You took my life and I shall take yours. _Quid pro quo._ We are even."

She was prepared for the smack of rejection, but she's reeling from the concussive vitriol of his words. She's weak, like she's been bled into a basin, but still has to formulate the best response to the…_extensive_ rebukes—she settles for anger and indignation.

"How _dare_ you? Blaming me for your mistakes. You made your decisions, James Norrington. _You _ordered your men to the _Isla de Muerta_, and _you_ allowed Jack Sparrow to escape. You coward! You-you hypocrite!"

He snorts at this.

"I fail to see the humor."

"Oh, I would explain the irony to you, but you would fail to see the humor."

She crosses her arms, nostrils flaring, but her voice is tight and controlled. "Please explain sir, while I may not find the humor I certainly will disprove whatever ludicrous reasoning led you to it, _former_ Commodore."

"Interesting."

"What?"

"Do you believe that you are always right?"

"Certainly not. We all make mistakes."

"Evidently, though I find it interesting that before I even relate my reasoning to you, you are already convinced that it's faulty. Thus, by your reasoning, I am given to understand that you are correct even though you don't know the argument."

"I—erm..."

"I thought so. The irony of this situation is that you admonished me for not taking responsibility for my actions in order to deflect responsibility from yourself. I admit that my flaw was in loving you, and yet I wait for you to admit that you used my love to your own ends. Now who is the hypocrite?"

A lump swells in her throat, and she sucks in a sob. Silently, she curses herself for giving him the ammunition to destroy her.

"What of the child? What of _me_?"

"Your child is a bastard.You are a whore. And that is something for which you alone can be held accountable. When the town finds out about your indiscretions, you will be an outcast, Miss Swann."

"Why don't you call me Elizabeth?"

"Because I must avoid all familiarity with your sort. A gentleman must be conscious of his reputation, and I am afraid that consorting with such _disreputable_ company might put mine in jeopardy, especially given the tarnishing it has suffered as of late. You _do_ understand."

He does not ask it as a question. He does not mean it as a question.

"James…"

"That will be _Captain _Norrington to you. Only my friends and equals may address me by my Christian name and you, Miss Swann, are neither."

She rises, "You will burn for your selfishness. Good day," and leaves in a huff.

"Good day to you—and please stop confirming the irony of the situation," he calls after her.

When the echo of her retreating footfalls fades, he sucks a fevered gulp from his hip-flask, like an infant at the breast.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: The "You are paying me the tremendous compliment..." line comes from lilithmorgana's awesome hp fic "the heart of light, the silence", which itself was stolen from Anita Brookner's _Hotel du Lac._

Oh yeah, and the middle-class English girl who finds herself unable to inherit and dependent on a man to secure her fortune is totally stolen from Jane Austen. Go misogynistic English inheritance laws!11


	2. Nervous Stimulation

A/N: Apoplexy was the 18th century term for a stroke.

Nervous Stimulation

"You should feel lucky, Miss Swann, fifty years ago your physician would have thought that your father's apoplexy was caused by an excess of the phlegm humor blocking the flow of animal spirits to the brain."

Dr. Bufflehead sputters a chuckle that rapidly deteriorates into a racking cough. He fishes a wadded-up handkerchief from his breast pocket. It is a wrinkled, ratty old thing, stiff and crumbling with dry mucous. To Elizabeth, it seems to be an apt physical reflection of its owner.

Dr. Bufflehead is an older gentleman whose visage can best be described in terms of a fat, flaky pastry. From top to bottom, he is bald with a discolored pate that is constantly flaking from the shedding of sunburnt skin. Lining this pate are two wiry mounds of gray hair that stick up like tangled chaparral. His eyes are a dull gray color, and rest above two puffy, ruddy cheeks. He has no chin to speak of, as it rests on a doughy pillow of fat which substitutes for his neck. His body is over-stuffed, but stuck-through with tiny toothpick limbs—like a Turkey.

When the coughing fit subsides, he stuffs the sodden rag back into his pocket.

"Thanks to advanced medical science, we now know that it was caused by over-stimulation of the nerves leading to an imbalance of bodily fluids."

Elizabeth nods. The medical specifics give her a touch of vertigo, but she's not concerned with the physiological aspects of her father's apoplexy so much as what she can do for him now that it's happened. But Dr. Bufflehead seems far more concerned with flaunting his extensive medical knowledge.

"Since his nerves are over-stimulated, the treatment is simple—we must de-stimulate them."

It's irrational, but she feels scandalized. The repetition of _stimulate_ from the old man seems rather lascivious. She crosses her arms.

"How would one de-_stimulate_ them, Doctor?" She tries to say 'stimulate' in as neutral a fashion as possible, but in trying to affect said neutrality, she infuses unintended emphasis on it. Great.

He smiles…lasciviously. He probably thinks _stimulate_ is a cue. A cue signifying that she want to stimulate him—genitally. _Or perhaps I'm so overly-conscious of it, that I'm imagining it_.

"Well, there is of course the time-honored cure-all of…bleedings!" Like a magician, he sweeps away the bedsheet to reveal her father's right arm. Dr. Bufflehead seems rather pleased, and Elizabeth doesn't know exactly how he expected her to react. _Wow—Lacerations!_

She had expected the arm to be pale and wan, like the rest of him, but it's angry and red with three parallel incisions running from elbow to wrist. The incisions themselves are jagged, as if carved by someone with palsy, and the skin surrounding them is hot scarlet and raised. And if she's not mistaken—_Oh God_.

"Doctor."

"Yes dear."

His unwarranted familiarity irritates her. "That white fluid coming out of the wound. Is that, erm, normal?"

"Ah yes. _That_ white fluid is a good thing. You see, his means that you father has developed an infection, and infection is part of the healing process."

"Oh good. I was worried for a moment. That's reassuring." She doesn't feel reassured at all, but scolds herself for doubting a trained physician.

Dr. Bufflehead sucks in a voluminous breath and sneezes a squall into his hand, then wipes a trail of mucous away with his index finger, which he then uses to probe the incisions.

"Ahh!" Governor Swann jerks awake.

For a moment, Elizabeth hopes that the sudden burst of energy indicates that he's about to announce that his health is greatly improved, whereupon her will climb out of bed and attend to matters of state. Then he will kiss his daughter's forehead and reassure her that everything is going to be perfectly fine. Hope withers as her father melts into the pillows with a weak moan.

His face is clammy and gray, like a thin layer of clay smudged over a skull. His mouth hangs slack open, with a white crust of dried spittle at the corners. She tries to shake the thought that he looks like a three-days dead corpse.

"Governor Swann, so good to see you awake again." Dr. Bufflehead greets with an amiability that sounds shockingly patronizing to Elizabeth's ears. Like he's talking to an imbecile.

Comprehension flashes in her father's eyes, but his lips don't follow. They twitch, and he manages to stutter a few feeble mumbles but he doesn't succeed in enunciating a complete word. Just cut-off "m…"s and "h…"s.

"That's all right, Governor." Bufflehead pats him on the shoulder. Elizabeth seethes. _ He is your governor, not a mental patient and you shall treat him as such._ Though Elizabeth feels that it would be an affront to her father's honor if his teen-aged daughter defends it. It would make him look weak. She quiets her bitterness.

"I was just explaining you apoplexy to your daughter, though I'm sure that this is too complicated for a young lady to understand. You know, my dear, that the first fit of apoplexy is sometimes referred to as a _summons_ and if one survives, the second is called an _execution_."

A hearty chuckle—that rapidly degrades into another coughing fit. A hard, phlegm-rattling coughs that sound like vomiting.

"Doctor, I don't think it's appropriate to talk about this in front of my—"

"—Nonsense. The governor could use a bit of humor. And anyway, my curatives have helped him to recover him splendidly."

"You mean the bleeding."

"Oh, there's more to it than that. I'm a doctor, not some quack barber. In addition to the bleedings, there have been purgings, enemas and no food except weak broth. The combined effects of these treatments have led to a precipitous de-stimulation of his nerves."

She looks down. Her father's mewling, a rivulet of drool dribbles down his chin.

"Yes, but is it possible that you're weakening him?"

Dr. Bufflehead ignores her and returns to his charge.

"Governor, it is time for your afternoon bleeding."

"Nuh…Nuh…Nuh…"

Elizabeth realizes he's only sputtering with half of his mouth.

"Now, now. Don't get over-excited. It will interfere with your cure."

Her father struggles weakly in a delirium, thrashing with his left arm and leg, the other half of his body is lead. His eyes swing up to Elizabeth, glassed with fever.

"I-I can't. H-he doesn't want—"

"—Stupid girl! A pox to his wishes! I am the pre-eminent physician in Port Royal and I will not have _my_ treatments hindered by some ignorant child, now do as I say!"

Elizabeth has the absurd urge to cry. Not because she was called a stupid girl, but because her father didn't start at having his daughter denigrated like a street person.

Avoiding his eyes, she firmly holds down him down with her arms. She thought she'd have to climb on the bed and rest her weight on him, but the thrashing is more spasmodic than forceful. She doesn't like the feel of him. Cold and thin with loose skin and so frail she's afraid her weight might break him. His bones feel hollow, like shafts of straw. He'll give her a good thrashing for it when he recovers. Her chest tightens when she considers that she may never receive that thrashing.

"That's a good girl, now."

She doesn't respond. Just rivets her eyes to the floor, the room silent except for the creak of the bed as her father strains under her in spasms.

For the first time, she considers that she might soon be alone in the world. That "stupid girl" could be a mild insult compared to the disparagement she is sure to endure as soon as her belly begins to swell. Like an infection. Dr. Bufflehead could perform a simple procedure to let some air in and make it go away, but the news would travel to the entirety of Port Royal before she could even recover herself. She's heard whispers of a gentleman who performs the same procedure at an inn by the docks, but his discretion would come at a price and as it stands, Elizabeth has no access to her father's accounts. It suddenly becomes harder to breathe, and she could blame her corset, but that would be terribly dishonest. At least when she's reduced to a common whore, she'll have Will's bastard to love her.

She hears the staccato drip of blood into the basin, gradually increasing to a flood.

His struggling weakens to ripples, and then finally stops.

"You can let go now. He's passed out."

She doesn't want to let go. She wants to shake him.

Elizabeth releases her grasp. She must have been holding him more tightly than she thought, because there are hand-shaped white areas where she had been clutching him. Absently, she notes that they're slow to color.

Dr. Bufflehead commences another coughing fit. She won't be shocked if he hacks his lungs out of his throat. In the throes of the whooping, he pulls a clay pipe and flint strike-a-light from his pocket. Between coughs, he fumbles with the strike-a-light until a spark finally catches in the bowl. He draws in a heady volume of smoke, not in one, voluminous inhalation, but in those stuttering, infantile sucks through the corner of his mouth.

"Ah," he punctuates this with a noxious exhalation. "Much better. You know, Miss Swann, that the tobacco leaf, while invigorating the lungs, is also an excellent cure for everything from the cancer to sneezing."

He takes a series of thoughtful puffs. It sounds like bubbles bursting.

"Curiously, my dear, your father has developed a cough. Be assured though, I have doubled the purgings to treat that as well."

"Purgings?"

"A heavy dose of mercuric chloride is administered to induce vomiting. This rids his system of impurities."

She doesn't know what to say, but she's thinking she wants to vomit to rid herself of a few impurities. She looks at her belly.

"Dear, did your father experience any especial over-stimulation before his apoplexy?"

"I don't understand."

"Oh, you know. Was he in the throes of a thorough debauch?"

_Now_ she's not imagining that she's being scandalized.

"Sir, it is inappropriate for me to speak of such things, and improperly forward of you for asking them."

"Propriety be damned! This information may save your father's life, so I would suggest that you volunteer it if you know it."

Despite her well-trained reluctance, she answers, "I was the only one with him at the time."

"Well…"

_Don't tell me that you're going to enquire as to whether he was having a thorough debauch with _me.

"Was there another disturbance? A shock to his system? An argument perhaps?"

"It's all right, dear. We can salvage this situation. You'll have to spend some time in the Carolinas. You can stay in Charleston with my associate Mr. Thatcher and his wife. You remember, Mr. Thatcher from when you were a little girl?"

"The grim little man with the wooden teeth," she giggles.

"That is not funny. You will need to learn to respect him, as he is going to help you through these…unpleasantries. After you've come to term, it can be disposed of and you can come home and we'll forget that this unfortunate situation ever came to be."

"Thank you father."

He moves to hug her, but she jerks away.

"Until now I was unaware of the little regard in which you held Will. So long as his seed is in my body, you won't suffer my presence, and when I've finally evacuated my entrails of it, you'll throw it away like rubbish? Where? Some gloomy orphanage? A plantation? The river?"

"Elizabeth, I am doing this for you. What do you think will happen if the town finds out? You'll be scandalized. They won't speak to you, they will scorn you, they will close the church doors to you and tell you that you are already damned. No man will marry you."

"I don't care."

"Don't you know what that means? I am not getting any younger, and when I die, you can't inherit. Since we have no relatives, the crown will absorb _everything_ leaving you penniless. Then what will you do? No one will take you as a governess if you have a child, leaving you with one option. They may call you a whore, but I will not allow my daughter to become one."

She wants to slap him and a verbal one will be more jarring. She reaches for something horrible to say, no matter if it's truth or no.

"Well father, you needn't worry about that. I'm already a whore. This isn't Will's child. In fact, I'm not sure whose it is—I was too busy tarting myself to every crew member of the _Black Pearl_, all the way from the Captain to the Bilge Bailer. I had at least forty men between my floods, and any one of them could have seeded me. Or maybe if I'm lucky, then I've got multiple children growing in my womb—from different fathers. I liked two at once—one in my cunt and another jammed firmly in my fundament. I was stuffed like a Christmas turkey. I'm sure it's Jack's though. Mother's have an instinct for these kinds of things. Wouldn't you _love _that? A pirate's bastard for a grandchild, swilling rum, chasing wenches and shaming you. When the town knows that your spawn is so _generous _in her affections with pirates, you will be a pariah. They won't speak to you, they will scorn you, they will close the church doors to you and tell you that you are already damned. Right, _Father_? Father…?"

His eyes aren't on her, but they don't seem anywhere else, then they roll to stark white. He crumbles to the floor.

Elizabeth's heart deflates and she faints.

"No. No shock that I can recall."

Dr. Bufflehead stares at her dubiously. She squirms like a worm on the dissection table. She has the illogical notion that she's transparent as glass and just as fragile.

"W-what is your prognosis, sir?"

"Oh, very optimistic. A few more days of treatment, and he'll be fit as a fiddle. Don't worry dear, your father will be back to his old self in no time. Perhaps even healthier. Just remember, only feed him weak broth, and in my absence I need you to administer the laxatives and purgatives. Do you think you can do that?"

"Yes doctor. I'm glad to hear that he's going to make a full recovery. Shall I show you to the door?"

"Oh, thank you."

_Blast!_ It was just etiquette. Normally someone is meant to say that they can find the door unassisted. Now she's stuck listening to his prattling for at _least_ another three minutes.

"Miss Swann, in light of recent events, I believe it prudent for you to find a suitable husband with haste."

"Excuse me?"

"I am the pre-eminent physician in Port Royal. I make good money at my trade, and have used it to secure a small tobacco plantation in the Virginia colony. I already have ten slaves, and a cozy house up there. In five years time I shall have enough money to retire and become a gentleman farmer. Suffice it to say that I shall require a wife to match my station. One who will care for me, look after the house, and bear me children whilst I am still young. That woman will be you—if you take me up on my offer _immediately_."

"Why immediate—" She doesn't need to finish the question. He wants to marry her whilst she's still a governor's daughter, not some poor orphan girl. Where is the prestige in that? But he just said that her father would regain his health soon…

He's going to die.

Well, that proposal was not only rude and highly inappropriate, but the very idea of marrying the man is repugnant. Of course she's going to refuse…

But if she marries him quickly, and beds the old man without delay, then she might be able to pass the child off as his…maybe Dr. Bufflehead resembled Will in his younger days. Ha! He has wan gray eyes, and judging by the faded insinuations of color in the gray, was violently ginger-haired. If Elizabeth bears a child with soft brown eyes and dark hair…she can't claim that these traits came from _her_. No, she'll be turned out. Maybe forced to work in the fields with the slaves. She wonders how he makes a profit growing tobacco if he smokes it all…

"I'm sorry doctor, but I must decline."

He sighs. "Well, we shall see if you change your mind in a few days' time. Good day to you, my dear."

She's dizzy. Nauseous. She leans against the door feeling like her bones have melted.

_He's going to die he's going to die he's going TO DIE! Daddy…_

Elizabeth sinks to the floor in a puddle and cries. He's going to die and take her with him. She's already dead, in a way. She has no access to money, and since her father isn't going to regain his speech capabilities, he can't tell his purser to giver her any. Not to mention that she is pregnant with a dead man's child.

She did nothing wrong. Social convention allows for a couple to partake in their marital privileges after a formal betrothal. They were betrothed, the wedding was to be in two weeks. Certainly, if she delivered in eight and a half months, people would raise their eyebrows, but there would have been no wrongdoing. And yet now—now that he's dead, she's a whore.

She is a strong woman in her own right, yet law dictates that her strength be propped up by the men around her. Now that they're gone…

She has no family in England. Her father has no living relations, thanks to being part of a prodigiously long line of only children. And her mother's side…Her mother died when she was very young. It was the consumption. That's why her father took the governorship in the Caribbean. He said the air was far healthier than that in England…

But he never spoke of her mother's side of the family, and now he never will.

A male relation, any male relation. She doesn't care if it's a middle-aged great uncle or a teen-aged third cousin. Anyone who could save her…

--She'll save herself.

The trinkets in the house itself are worth enough money to support her for a few years, maybe longer if she can be frugal. She'll buy passage on a ship and go somewhere…anywhere where they won't call her a whore as she passes on the street. Or if they do—at least she won't understand the language they're saying it in. And she should hurry and collect as much as will fit in a trunk, before taking from her own house becomes burglary.

Yes. She picks herself up from the floor, tremulous as a leaf caught in a breeze.

knock knock _Ow! _She reels. That rapping was only two inches of oak from her ear, but her head hurts as if it had been knocked on itself.

She considers not answering it. It's probably Dr. Bufflehead come to see if her father has met his _unexpected_ end yet. But it wouldn't do to not answer, and it will only take a moment to brush him off as quickly as propriety will allow.

She throws the door open, and realizes that her gaze was a good six inches higher than the eyeline of that of the gentleman standing on her doorstep, and the first thing she sees is the peak of a powdered wig.

Her eyes drop, and meet the eyes of a man whom she would never wish speak to… without a brace of pistols.

"Lord Beckett."

"Elizabeth Swann."

He brushes past her into the house, shutting the door behind him.

"I have come to petition you for marriage…That is, if you aren't already some pound a night strumpet."

A/N Bufflehead is a species of duck, and we all know that ducks go quack quack quack


	3. Without Feathers

Without Feathers

"_Hope is a thing with feathers."—Emily Dickenson_

_My dear Miss Swann,_

_I hope that this letter finds you safely, as I know how fickle post to the Americas can be. I also hope that it finds you in good health and circumstance. My name is Jonathan Radcliffe, your second cousin. My mother Mrs. Sarah Herrick Radcliffe and your mother Mrs. Katherine Lanyer Swann were close friends as children and remained so even until your mother's untimely passing. My mother tells me that she was very fond of you as a child, and has dearly missed you since your departure to the Americas. _

_As for myself, my father has acquired for me a post as a trade broker for the Dutch East India Company on an annual salary of six hundred pounds. This sum is enough to establish myself, young as I am at the age of twenty-two. I feel then that it would be appropriate to marry. I assure you, this is not a proposal, as I would be pleased to first renew our acquaintance._

_You may not remember, as you were so very young last I saw you, but I once rescued your scarf from the sea. Our families were on holiday in Scarborough, North Yorkshire to enjoy the sea. You were seven and wore a bright red scarf wrapped around your neck to ward off the cold. The strong coastal breeze snatched it from your neck and carried it out to sea. You cried for your scarf, as you held it in so great affection, so I being a doughty nine-year-old, dove into the water and rescued your scarf from certain demise. You were so happy that you immediately put it back on, spoiling your dress with seawater. But you paid no heed, because you had your scarf. You thanked me in the highest terms, calling me your "dashing rescuer". Do you still have that scarf? I would deplore the thought of my sacrifice being all in vain. I'm only joking._

_I travel to establish and renew trading contacts throughout the world, so if this letter does not reach you with haste, I may one day be called to the Caribbean to negotiate trade for that region's burgeoning tobacco and sugar industries._

_Kindest regards,_

_Jonathan T. L. Radcliffe, Esq._

_Nottingham 2nd August_


	4. Les Amants

A/N: Addressing a concern from your comments. Liz's gaze was six inches above Cutler's head because she was expecting Dr. Bufflehead at the door, who stands at a respectable 6'. I didn't mean to imply that Beckett's a dwarf, though if he _were_ a dwarf, I'd call him "Snarky."

A/N thanks to Noemy009, Unikorn, Imortalis, letthedreamdescend and the-original-score. Yes, all five you guys who are reading this…or at least who are kind enough to review it.

Les Amants

"Why do you always want to play chess?"

"Check. Because I always win." Mary bends over the board red hair falling over her sunburned cheeks. She bites her lip and advances her queen. Cutler sorely misses his queen at this moment, and curses this oversight that allowed it to be taken by a pawn. Some upstart pawn overthrew his queen!

"What's the challenge in that?"

"It's not about challenge. It is about achieving the intended result—that is, winning. Now, so long as my methods yield the same results, I shall continue to use them. Go to the well until the well is dry. When the well is dry, find a new well. Check."

They're sitting crosslegged on his bed, the chessboard situated between them. He wants to knock it over—sending chess pieces flying across the room—then he'll fuck her vigorously. But after she'll say that he did it to prevent himself from losing.

"How do you know I'm not just letting you, knowing that when you achieve said results you're more inclined to be amiable toward me?"

"Because you would never lose at something willingly, Cutler. Even if it does mean that I'll let you shag me. Check mate. Now, what have I won?"

"You already have me."

"Well, if I've already got that, then it would be rather silly for me to ask it of you."

"Then what do you ask?"

"Your wig. It makes you look like one of those pale, snuff-snorting society gents."

"Well maybe I am one of those _pale, snuff-snorting society gents_."

"You'd like them to think you are, Cutler, but underneath that callous exterior I can assure you, there's a decent man…no matter how ashamed of him you are. Now, your wig sir."

He smirks and plucks out the hairpins securing the wig. He peels off the coiffed mass of course horse-hair, revealing a soft mat of deep brown hair, moist with perspiration.

"Satisfied?"

"Not nearly. It's flat and sweaty because that wig doesn't let your head breathe." She leans over the bed and ruffles his hair. "Ah, much better. You look rather fetching with your natural hair, so why do you insist on wearing that dreadful thing?"

"So that I look older, in order that people might think I have something wise to say."

"The old dictating the fashion of the young. My, how backwards our times are."

"Yes, and even more backwards is that fact that we _know_ that our times are backwards. Normally, that's the prerogative of historians studying us two-hundred years from now. Here."

He extends his arm intending to hand the wig to her.

Mary recoils, laughing. "Don't even think of giving that ratty old thing to me." She swats it away like a particularly disgusting mosquito, puffing a suffocating cloud of white powder into the air.

Cutler coughs.

"Are you all—" she pauses, noticing that a thin layer of powder has settled on his face, and laughs.

"What?"

"Oh God, your face! Now you _do _look like one of those pale, snuff-snorting—"

"—Shut it!" He says, with more mirth than authority. He learned long ago that he can't order Mary around like one of his lackeys. She'd laugh and berate him for being such a controlling bore. And if he insisted in his _I _am_ the law _tone, she would roll her eyes and say something saucy about compensating for his stature. He likes a woman who isn't intimidated by him. A woman who equals him in pride and shrewdness. It makes him feel as if there is something to be won when he fucks her. And yes, it is fucking.

Love-making is something slow, deliberate and boring—rather like dancing a minuet. Tightly choreographed, in three quarters time, devoid of passion—in summation, so chaste that you often forget that you've got your prick in a lady's cunt.

Intercourse is something that Anglican priests perform with their wives—fully clothed and through a hole in the bedsheets. Is that why they call it _holy_?

But fucking—that's surely what God intended for coitus to be. It's like he's hidden his divine secrets deep inside your woman and it's _justbarely_ out of reach!—And it drives you absolutely mad. Consequently, the sex is hard, bruising, heady—a primordial spiral into bestial frenzy where inner-monologue is hacked to spasmodic monosyllables screaming _FUCK_ and _FUCK _and _FUCKFUCKFUCK _as you plunge unthinking, unyielding into the burning embrace of salvation. Fucking is like opium, Cutler reflects, a world you only know when you're there.

Spending himself inside Mary is like a victory, like he has conquered a particularly powerful army. Somehow, it's gratifying to see that self-satisfied independence melt into moans, and need and sweat.

It's nice to have a strong person who needs you—even if it's just for an orgasm.

Cutler loathes those simpering little society girls who shove their affections upon him, coveting his titles yet recoiling from his character. Even more, he loathes the fact that one day he would be compelled to choose one for a bride. Yes, Mary excites him and keeps intellectual pace with him, but these things just won't do in a wife. A wife is meant to be as a wall painting—pretty and silent. Anything else would undermine him in his business affairs. If he is to conduct himself with the cool-headed authority required of his post and of his station then he can't be made to look like a cuckold by his wife. But his mistress…

"We should play another round."

"Yes, and what shall be the prize should I lose."

"_When_ you lose I shall ask for you your waistcoat. After the next round I shall ask for your breeches and then—"

"You know you're only giving me incentive to lose as quickly as possible."

"And then you will look rather silly completely nude in the company of a fully dressed lady. Think of the scandal it would cause you—not to mention the bafflement it would cause the town."

"I have, and I know just the way to eschew it." He lunges over the chessboard between them, and pounces on her, pinning her slender wrists under his palms. They're so sweaty she could easily slip out, but she doesn't, and he knows she won't. "Nothing is baffling about a man and a woman nude in each other's company, and this way we're _both_ scandalized. And anyway, this is far more expedient than ten games of chess. I _do_ have to get you home before the week is out."

"You're a scoundrel."

"You love it."

She smiles, "I know."

Her cool breath whispers on his hot neck. Even fully dressed, Mary looks wanton. Ginger hair flared out like corona, lips swollen from her nervous habit of gnawing on them—which drives him to distraction, but he has to admit that the swelling effect is rather pleasing to him. With his weight crushed against her, her breasts are so immodestly exposed that they threaten to burst out of her corset. The familiar flame smolders in his groin, mewling for flesh. He barely suppresses the impulse to dry-thrust against her stomach. Cutler lowers his head to taste her and—

Knock Knock Knock

"Milord, someone to see you." his manservant Robert announces through the closed door.

"_Coitus Interruptus_!" he shouts in frustration. "Who the bloody, sodding hell is it?"

Robert pauses, as if unsure whether or not to proceed. On the one hand, his employer seems rather angry at the intrusion, but on the other hand he _is _demanding to know who the caller is…

Frustrated, Cutler shouts. "Out with it!"

"Captain Norrington, sir."

"Norrington? Tell him that any business he has with me is to be discussed in my office during business hours and not at my bloody house on bloody Sunday!"

"Very good sir."

Robert's footsteps retreat at double-speed down the hall.

"Now, where were we?"

"I was just consenting for you to ravish me against my will."

"Ah yes, now I recall." His hand creeps up her dress, toward her warm—

"Milord."

"What _now_?" he growls.

Robert's voice swivels up in pitch. "He really is most insistent Sir."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he's pulled out a pistol and he's threatening to—" A great commotion breaks out on the other side of the door, Robert yelps.

"To what?" Cutler yells, doubting that Robert can answer and except that he hasn't heard a discharge, would be fearing that Captain Norrington had already followed-through with his threat.

The door bursts open. "—To kill myself!" He's got the muzzle of a flintlock pressed firmly under his chin. Mary scrambles into a sitting position, trying to preserve some semblance of propriety.

"Well then do mind the carpet. Bloodstains can be so stubborn."

"You should know."

"Yes," he says dangerously. "I do."

Norrington laughs, a mad sort of mirth. "Are you going to talk that way in front of your tart."

"She is not—"

Mary pipes, "—I am _not_ a tart and just because every woman in Port Royal spurns you for being a drunken reprobate doesn't mean that you need to take your frustrations out on the whole of the fairer sex."

He smiles distantly. "Your name's Mary, is it not? You know the dominant faith in this world is based on the virginity of your namesake, but you know what I think? I think she was just some upstart Judean whore who spread her legs like marmalade on toast for some big, strapping Centurion. Then when she finds that her belly's swelling, she chocks it all up to an _immaculate conception_ from God. So Christ is some bastard half-Roman. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that women don't try that excuse more often, after all the last time it worked we got a New Testament." He pulls a foggy bottle of rum out of his pocket, and quickly realizes that he can't uncork it and still hold the flintlock to his head. After a moment of hazy deliberation, he pulls the cork out with his teeth, drops it to the floor and knocks back a heady volume.

"Captain, we shall adjourn to my study. The floors are hardwood and easy enough for my servants to clean so you may end your life there."

"I'll be back momentarily, Mary. You stay here."

"Cutler—"

"Stay here!" he barks, and regrets it immediately. He never raises his voice, not even to the most exasperating of lackeys, and certainly never in her presence. Yelling means that you have lost control, not only of yourself, but of the situation. It yields the advantage. It is a desperate paroxysm of force that reveals weakness. He's just so frustrated with Norrington's impertinence and he only wants to spare her from further abuse.

By now, Cutler would have had Norrington arrested for public drunkenness, breaking and entering and—erm…some capital crime—sodomy!. He's a navy chap, he has probably engaged in the time-honored naval tradition at some point. Then through his influence in with the local magistrate, Cutler would see that justice is administered with the utmost severity and discrimination…

That is if Norrington weren't the best privateer in the Caribbean. Not that Cutler really cares a whit for pirates, the Spanish, or even Spanish pirates, so long as the trade routes for the East India Company are secure, and through the Captain's efforts, they have been. In addition, the off-the-books profit made from Norrington's salvages has been…substantial. Most privateers are essentially undisciplined profiteers who _undervalue_ their prizes, as it were at least in their reports. Naturally, this grievously reduces Cutler's 10 share in the profits as lieutenant governor. But Norrington, with his deeply engrained military background is a godsend for three crucial reasons. First, as an officer he was accustomed to reporting to superior officers honestly and in full. Consequently, embezzlement is not an issue where Norrington is concerned.

Second, his experience as a commander of dispirited, underpaid sailors was excellent training for a privateer captain. Privateering crews were essentially commissioned pirating vessels, and thus—shockingly—they were crewed primarily by pirates…who didn't want to be on the wrong side of the law—or at least the hangman's noose. Thus these types were predominantly _coward_ pirates. Roguish in lifestyle yet timid in battle. And of course they come with all of the baggage of a pirate crew. A general inclination toward thievery, a capricious relationship with authority and a penchant for desertion. Privateers would just as soon desert to pirate vessels as hunt them. But Norrington—his force of character inspired unheard of loyalty and discipline in his crew.

Most privateer captains, quite frankly, were little more than criminals and were generally disinclined to tend to the responsibilities of commanding a ship, _details_ like logistics, tending to the health of the crew, ship maintenance—so that when the ship docks Cutler is the one who is forced to deal with a disgruntled band of diseased, malnourished scurvy cases. But James Norrington was cut from finer cloth. He possesses a profound sense of duty and honor which inspires the men to follow him. They are assured of his management skills, so they aren't of afraid of him embezzling their cut of the loot—making their expeditions far more profitable to them than piracy. In addition, his crew is probably the most healthy among the privateering set. Fruits and vegetables are part of each sailor's daily rations, and there is always a ship's doctor on board—even if Norrington has to pay him out of his own pocket. A doctor is a luxury on such vessels, whereon the closest they normally have to a doctor is a ship's carpenter to perform amputations. This is a shrewd investment on Captain Norrington's part, and one which Cutler appreciates as a businessman, as it dramatically reduces disease and mortality on the ship, meaning he has more able men at any given time and healthy men are less prone to mutiny. Cutler has to admit, aboard his ship, Captain Norrington conducts himself with the utmost discipline and pragmatism—though his conduct in his personal life is a different matter entirely.

Which leads to the third advantage Cutler enjoys from Norrington's services—the man has become such an abject fatalist that he has developed two traits which are supremely advantageous to his employer. One, he has developed marked workaholic tendencies. Two, he is such a wretched drunkard that he demands little wages beyond what would buy him enough rum to remain thoroughly drunk during his brief jaunts on shore.

Yes, Captain Norrington is indispensable—but Cutler would never let him know it. If the man knew his own value, he might actually strive to make something of himself. In fact, Cutler has enough M.P.'s in his pocket to secure a decent naval appointment for Norrington. But no, Cutler likes him just where he is. He's too great an asset to the profit margin.

Cutler brushes past Norrington, not making eye contact, and briskly leads the way to the study. The captain follows with a rolling gait, which is most decidedly _not_ a residual effect of his sea legs.

Robert is nowhere in sight. He must have fled from the madman with the pistol. Cutler sighs. _And he came so highly recommended_. It won't do to have a skittish servant in Cutler's line of work.

He indicates a leather wing chair.

"Please, _sit_."

Norrington squares his shoulders and does not sit—all the while keeping the pistol trained on himself, of course.

Cutler smiles and remains standing as well. It wouldn't do to physically put himself on a lower level than Norrington—despite the fact that the Captain towers several inches higher than him. Well, there's nothing for _that_ now is there.

"You are either the smartest man in my employ—or the thickest. Taking yourself hostage—very reckless! But also, very shrewd as I can't have you arrested for threatening bodily harm unto _yourself_."

Norrington takes a deep swallow of rum. Cutler's not sure if he has been listening.

"I would offer you a drink, but you seem sufficiently supplied as it is. Oh and you may put down your pistol, you have my attention."

"It's not your attention I want, _Milord_. I've come here to kill myself."

"What can possibly be wrong, Captain? Business is splendid. Tuesday's salvage fetched a five-hundred pound profit."

Norrington cocks the flintlock, and presses the muzzle more firmly under his chin for emphasis.

"You suicidals. You can't just be respectable and take some arsenic in the privacy of your own homes. At least then you won't leave such a frightful mess of brain matter and blood. Even better, why don't you just dig a ditch in the churchyard and bury yourself sparing us all the trouble of disposing of you. No, you just have to make spectacles of yourselves. But you don't intend to kill yourself. After that display in my bedchamber I theorize that you hoped that I would do the job myself, in which case you are a craven prat. And no, I will not indulge you."

_Was that a look of disappointment, Captain?_

"Well, then I have one question for you—don't mistake, this is not sympathy…merely curiosity. What has inspired this outburst? Ran out of money, sobering up, spurned by yet another pretty girl who's disgusted by you?"

A hitch.

_Ah, I see._

Norrington drops the pistol. Cutler flinches, afraid that it will discharge and shoot him somewhere vital. He curses himself for being such a coward—or at least showing it.

"I can't bear it here! I need to go back to sea immediately!" he bursts suddenly.

"And wh—"

"—I though I was done with her! She already killed me!—now she's kicking me in the stones for good measure."

His voice is strained, probably on the verge of tears. Now that Cutler knows that the matter is Norrington's personal triviality, he's waiting for the opportune moment to chastise the captain for his conduct and boot him out the door.

"Elizabeth!" he wails like a wounded animal.

Cutler wonders if the neighbors can hear. Granted, Norrington sounds like a man being tortured, which would definitely ameliorate the respect in which they hold Cutler. On the other hand, he's screaming _Elizabeth_ which they might mistake for a cry of passion…a weeping cry of passion. Then they may mistake Norrington's voice for Cutler's and believe that then they'll regard him as some molly who weeps in women's arms. That simply won't do. He needs to calm him down before he can send him off.

"How is she _kicking you in the stones_?" He's not terribly proficient at this _comfort_ notion. He'd prefer to gag him. Much more efficient—and _far_ more satisfying.

"She wanted me to marry her!"

"Well, then she has finally come around. You should be quite content," _Or at least stop sniveling like a woman._

"No." More rum drains down his throat. Cutler notices that he doesn't screw his face when he drinks. Maybe he's becoming like one of those gnarled old salts at the taverns with the _permanent_ whisky faces. A horrifying thought. "She doesn't love me. She'll never love me…not that I care! That trollup! That—_whore_! That—"

"Yes, I understand that you question her virtue, now get to the point." Despite himself, Cutler is now quite curious—but that doesn't mean he's any more patient.

"Well, her _last_ fiancé died last month of…"

"Yes, I heard. Go on."

"And her father just suffered an apoplexy last night—the old sod is likely to give up the ghost at any moment…_And_ she doesn't have any family, so she asks _me _to marry her so that the crown doesn't absorb all of her assets."

_Oh god. _Cutler's breath catches in his chest. If he believed in a god, he'd call this a _godsend_. But as it was he knew that fortune was a temporary mistress, and one must seize the opportunity to turn her into something more permanent.

Like conquest. But he'll have to act quickly.

"…And she's pregnant! She should be charged with abuse if it's cursed with its mother's pigheadedness."

"Captain."

"—an evil harpy, she is. No—a succubus! Sucks men's souls straight out of their co—"

"—That will be sufficient, Captain." He raises the volume of his voice, but without shouting. Still in control.

"Captain, I'll have a job for you by Tuesday. I'll trust that you will refrain from further disgracing yourself. At least not in public. Remember, I have my reputation to consider and your misconduct reflects poorly on me as well."

He lowers his voice. "I gave you your employment when you were nothing more than a filthy exile fresh from Tortuga, Captain. Do not give me cause to regret it." He finds that it is better to insinuate threats rather than to say them outright. It frees the poor unfortunate's imagination to contemplate all manner or horrid things that Cutler can do to him. And he'll probably imagine far worse than Cutler would actually administer…which is exactly what he intends.

Norrington is unmoved. He's stared down death's throat too many times to be jarred by the nasal threats of a soft-handed businessman. Additionally, Cutler lacks a vital element for seriously threatening Norrington: something to threaten.

Most people who claim to have nothing are merely melancholics with no sense of gratitude. Often, they are the adolescent spawn of middle class families who, in actuality, have parents who love them, a comfortable home loaded with modern conveniences and an ample padding of money to prevent them from hurting themselves when they fall on their soft, bourgeois arses.

But James Norrington—there is a man with nothing to love and consequently (and much to Cutler's frustration) nothing to make him vulnerable. All that the man once cherished—family, friends, honor—are absent from his existence. Even his current love affair with the bottle is tenuous, characterized by a sort of fatalistic indifference. If he's drunk he's content to stumble through life in a fog, if he's sober he's content for the clarity to fully feel the sheer breadth of his failures.

And Cutler knows better than to threaten Norrington's person—probably the thing he holds in the lowest regard. Frankly, if Cutler one day decides to slowly and deliberately grind the Captain's hand bones into talcum powder with thumb screws, the only person he would be doing a disservice to would be himself. For one, the man is such a masochist that he would probably enjoy the ordeal, laughing like a demon in Cutler's face as Mercer crushes his phalanges. Not to mention that fact that he'd be depriving himself of his most profitable employee.

--But this is all trivial in light of this fantastic revelation.

"You are dismissed, Captain." Norrington stiffens. Not a moment before, he had been fidgeting to leave (that, or perhaps it was just delirium tremors).But his eyes had wandered repeatedly to the door, so even if he had been trembling from delirium tremors, he evidently was itching to leave. But now that his departure comes as an order from Cutler, he's reluctant to obey. _How juvenile._

Norrington fiddles with the rum bottle in his hand, but the hollow swish of rum at the bottom is conspicuously absent.

"Aye milord." He quickly turns to leave.

"—And on your way out, apologize to Mary in a manner befitting a lady of her station."

"Certainly Lord Beckett. By the way, I really fancy the powdered visage, very aristocratic, if a bit uneven. You know, if I didn't know any better I'd say that she's made you go soft. Who knew that a man could be a monster ninety nine percent of the time…My apologies Mary," he shouts through the closed door. He lowers his voice to a harsh whisper that is still decidedly audible to Cutler, "…that you're bedding this wanker with that pithy anchovy that he calls a penis."

He stumbles out the front door.

Cutler exhales sharply. Had he been holding his breath? His heart's palpitating furiously, his stomach's knotted and his lungs feel rung-dry and threadbare. How strange, that the most unpleasant sensations accompany the greatest moments of exhilaration. No matter, Cutler is about to become a very wealthy and powerful man indeed.

In one stroke (no pun intended) the governorship of Jamaica, the Swann family fortune and a substantial stake in the British East India Trading Company have fallen neatly into his lap.

Governor Swann possesses substantial hereditary stock in the company, as a result of the shrewd investments of his Great-Great Grandfather Willoughby Swann. Willoughby had been a major investor when the company was chartered in 1600. (Cutler takes a moment to curse his humble roots and the lack of foresight of his simpleton ancestry.) This alone furnished him with an 11 share in the company. But this is not the limit of his stake in the East India Company. Elizabeth's mother, Katherine Lanyer, was the only child of Henry Lanyer, who owned an additional 7 share. When he died, the investments—as well as a great heap of other monies—were transferred to Governor Swann. That's 18, surely enough to make him a member for the Court of Proprietors. To date, through astute political maneuvering (bribes, extortion, manipulation etc.) Cutler has managed to accrue a 2.3 share for himself.

Astonishing. If he manages to wed her, Cutler will have an extraordinary 20.3 share, making him the wealthiest man in the company—next to the Executive Governor himself. Making him the _de facto _next in line for Executive Governor. He'd be the most powerful man in England. Yes, he is quite aware that there is a parliament to reckon with, but capitalism enables business interests to control elected officials through influence-buying. _I shall purchase your power, and in turn you shall support my interests. Cross me and you shall soon find yourself fallen from that power._

He'll have to marry that spoiled little bint Elizabeth Swann to get it, but so long as his pocketbook reaps the benefits, he shall be more than able to cope with the many, _many_ drawbacks. And anyway, the advantage of a loveless marriage is the absence of love, meaning that Cutler is free from any emotional responsibility to her--though with the freedom to take his marital liberties with her. He has entertained some fairly elaborate fantasies that he would never dream of acting out upon with any respectable woman. But Miss Swann…

And how could she refuse him? Her existence is poised to collapse. Certainly, he is a preferable alternative to ruin. Or at least he would have her believe so.

—But the Governor's on the brink. He could have cashed in already—then William III has filled the royal coffers to the brim in a day. No, Cutler must hurry if he is to seize this to his advantage.

"Cutler!"

_Mary! Merde! Mierda! Merda! Scheiße! _

"Coming." This complicates things. No, this complicates nothing. The situation is simple. Free of emotional entanglement. An exchange. The centuries-old tradition wherein the aristocratic bachelor amuses himself with the middle class girl. He entertains her with his money and she entertains him with her body until he bores of her and moves on. _Reciprocity. _Then why is he agonizing?

He re-enters the bedchamber, an explanation clinging to his lips for why their acquaintance, while having been exceptionally satisfying, must come to an end, as he must marry with all possible haste and maintaining a relationship with a woman of her station would be exceedingly inappropriate.

"Your move." Mary says immediately, sitting cross-legged on the bed. "Don't think that I've forgotten our wager."

"Mary I…"

"What is it? Did something happen between you and Captain Norrington? Are you all right?" She takes his hand in hers and rubs his palm with her thumb. Tenderness. He'd been raised to live without it. Personal advancement was paramount, and all energies must be directed toward it. Any personal indulgence would be based on immediacy and characterized by detachment. Mary wasn't detachment and immediacy—though his education would have it that he was no more gratified by her than by a common whore. He knows that she gives him more than five second muscle spasms. This knowledge frightens him—but he can't deny that he wants to be touched by a hand that loves him.

"No. Just fine. I was just saying that I need a moment to plan my next move."

"Ah, well it won't do you any good. I will counter your next move with alacrity."

"Don't be so sure." His voice is flat and he's staring down toward the board, but he's too distracted to actually look _at _the board.

"Cutler?..."

He selects an arbitrary pawn and advances it two spaces.

She smiles and moves. He doesn't see where. His eyes won't focus on the board.

He moves, she moves. _Heart hammers._

He moves, she moves. _Stomach clenches._

He moves, she moves. _Breath seizes._

"Checkmate. Cutler, a four move check mate? Are you distracted? Or are you still impatient to lose. Poor dear, I'll not tease you any longer."

Her hands flutter to his breeches. _Blood runs acid, burning his veins—You can't be a monster ninety nine percent of the time—!_

"NO!" he barks.

"What will they think? A single woman in a single man's bedchamber? Have you no sense of decorum? Of your reputation, of _mine?_ Of course you don't. You're just a bloodthirsty upstart social climber willing to fuck her way into a title! Or failing that, ruin me with the scandal of it!"

By then a part of him loses consciousness, though his mouth still explodes with vitriol. He catches snatches of, "…conniving whore…" and "…social-climbing harpy…" and "…pigheaded hussy…" and a whole host of words he'd snatched from other peoples' mouths.

He has stopped. He must have. The silence is suffocating.

She looks stricken. Appropriately, she strikes him.

His cheek burns, but his guts catch fire.

He advances toward her, an automaton, and slaps her brutally across the face. The sound of it rattles his eardrums. He doesn't restrain himself because she was a woman. He doesn't restrain himself because he loves her. He doesn't restrain himself at all. For a moment his troubles have a ruddy-haired gat-toothed face to beat and batter and ruin. It is sublime.

She's still on her feet. This enrages him. He slaps her again. His hand is beginning to sting.

She is backing up toward the door, slowly. Too slowly. She's a thorn jammed in his side and he'll thrash until she's out. He strikes again.

She turns and runs out the door, face twisted and drowned in tears.

Cutler watches her awkwardly running figure through the open door. It must be hard to exert oneself like that in a corset.

His bones melt, and wilts into the bed.

The sheets still smell of her. Nothing like lavender or lilac or any other flower that women favor for their perfumes. Cutler finds that kind of artifice sickening. No, Mary's smell was more like musk. Sweet yet strong. Heady like sex in vagina-wet grass. It never failed to perk his prick. He immediately decides that he hates it and never wants to smell it again.

"Robert…Robert!"

Sprinting footfalls echo down the hallway.

"Yes..." a pause for breath "milord."

"I'm off to Governor Swann's. Tell Mercer to monitor Miss Swann's post. I want every letter, from condolences to invites for tea, to cross my desk before she receives it."

"Yes milord. Right away."

"One more thing," Cutler, feeling heavy in his own skin, rights himself and slides off the bed. "Wash the sheets."

A/N: M.P.Member of Parliament


	5. Conquis

Chapter 5: Conquis

A/N: Apologies for the long wait for a new chapter. I have started school again and am moving this month. This chapter has been written over the past few weeks with every moment I could steal in the library. So trust me, I did not forsake you.

Elizabeth is so shocked by the proposal, as well as the startlingly stark insult that she is struck speechless. So, in lieu of speech, she bursts into uncontrollable paroxysms of laughter. Laughter that rattles her frame and cramps her stomach.

Beckett doesn't move, his face an impassive mask.

"I fail to see a cause for mirth, Miss Swann."

"I ca—I ca—" she sputters, between guffaws.

She collects herself, and looks into those permafrost eyes noticing a nerve below his eye wincing in spasms. _Oh, it's too much_, and loses her composure again.

Eventually, she finds that the uproarious laughter has it quite hard to breathe, and that Beckett has not stormed out the door as she had hoped. Realizing that there is little humor in this, the flood of laughter ebbs.

"I can't marry you."

"Oh," he pauses thoughtfully, "And why is that."

The answer seems so blindingly obvious that Elizabeth finds herself quite unprepared to defend it. It's like having to argue that the grass is green to someone skeptical of its greenness with a more compelling rationale than "because it's bloody green." _Why can't I marry you?_ _Because I can't! It's axiomatic. It's self-evident. It goes without saying—and yet you're asking me to say._ Somehow she thinks that this would not be satisfactory. Then again, when she was quite young and inquisitive she asked the priest, "How do you know that there is a God." He answered by turning bright red and shouting, "Because he is! And if you don't believe in him he shall cast you into the flaming bowels of hell with the rest of the damned." She thought that if heaven were a place where you couldn't ask questions then it must be a dull place indeed, and one in which she would rather not like to dally anyway. Yes, he has a right to ask for a reason.

"Because you—you're…an evil bastard!"

"Miss Swann, evil is subjective and I can assure you that my parents were married at my conception. Additionally, your logic is faulty as being evil and being a bastard does not prevent one from marrying. By your sensibilities, Henry VIII was an "evil bastard", yet he married six times. Granted, this is an indication that he was quite adept at creating _failed_ marriages, but they were marriages nonetheless. I warn you, such half-cocked rhetoric will get you nowhere in a rational argument. Now, use more concrete evidence and tell me why we cannot marry."

"Because I hate you."

"Your sex truly is incapable of reason. That argument is incredibly naïve, even for _you_. Surely you aren't so insipid that you still believe that emotion is paramount in a marriage—it's hardly even relevant. Now, I shall grant you one final opportunity to plead your case in a factual, rational manner."

Now when did this change from a philosophical argument to an inquisition? How fitting. If unable to plead her case convincingly Elizabeth will be sentenced to life—as Beckett's wife. _Could you execute me instead? Draw and quarter? Burn alive? _

_If you want facts, then facts you shall have._

"You demolished a Cheapside orphanage and sold it as real estate, straining 100 orphans to the streets."

"Slander!" he says with vehemence, yet in a quiet, controlled voice, "It was 172 orphans that I strained to the streets. And there was nothing illegal in my activities—"

"But immoral!"

"—Miss Swann, I will thank you not to interrupt me again. The last man who interrupted me…never mind, you have gotten me terribly off track. Now, morality is relative unless legislated. In a marriage, the only immorality that would make the union legally void would be if one or the other of us were to copulate out of wedlock. Granted, as a man of status I am expected to have divers sexual conquests before and during my marriage. So, in a _de facto _sense, that proviso only really pertains to you. Now, your argument is irrelevant as disenfranchised orphans have nothing to do with our marriage. Besides, it is not my concern that they did not work hard enough at the mill to pay the rents. Go on."

Elizabeth totters mentally, feeling a bit knocked off balance. Perhaps she had expected him to deny the allegations Or at least not to so thoroughly defend his actions as to render any further accusations of greed, avarice and blatant cruelty immaterial.

"You embezzled thousands from East India Company when you were working in Calcutta, and when your business partner threatened to alert the Court of Directors you had him executed for the crime that you yourself committed."

"Indeed, the path to lordship is not an easy one."

He seems wistful. But Elizabeth knows enough of Beckett to know that any display of softness is a harbinger for malice.

"Your claim is nothing more than hearsay."

"Well unfortunately that's because the only person who would know is dead."

"Yes, unfortunately. And unfortunately for you, you have been so appallingly inept with your arguments that you have failed to produce a compelling reason for why we cannot marry. Thus, we shall marry with all due haste. Now, the future Mrs. Beckett, could you fetch me a brandy. Your cack-handed attempts at reason have strained my nerves."

"Wait just a moment sir, I would like to know what you feel gives you the right to come into my house, insult me, display the nastiest kind of impertinence and then betroth me to you without my consent."

"Oh, I assure you, I already have your consent. First of all, I should point out that this is not, in fact, your house. This is your father's house and when he chalks out within the week it will revert to the crown. Then you shall be a penniless mendicant in a very unsympathetic world. I should know. I loathe mendicants. Now, the only way to save yourself would be to make a suitable marriage before that happens. But you're a stigmatized woman. A recent widow with a reputation for pigheadedness. No respectable man in this town would marry you."

"News travels fast," she says, devoid of emotion.

"Only so fast as Captain Norrington can hobble.

"Oh yes, and you forgot that …"

"Yes?"

He didn't mention her pregnancy. Surely, that is no paltry detail. Did James neglect to tell him? Why would he do that? Obviously not out of concern for her. But he had been drunk when she'd spoken to him. Then again, these days he always seems to be drunk. That's how he was able to function well enough to give her a coherent telling-off earlier that day. After a while, drunks find their coherence in drunkenness. But is it possible that he forgot? That he won't remember in future? There can't be any other explanation. But she's already gone and started telling him. _Rash girl!_

"Erm…that I—that I'm disobedient. I haven't fetched you your brandy."

"Indeed." She looks around, trying desperately not to look at him, but he catches her eyes, in a moment detecting the lies behind them. The pregnancy. The child. Will's child.

"I'm sorry…"

"Don't apologize," She braces herself, stomach clenching and the pressure of sobs in her throat, "Just get the brandy."

"I, er—yes." Elizabeth, energized with relief, dashes to the drawing room. She throws open the mahogany doors of the entertainment cabinet and glances between the gleaming rows of varicolored bottles.

Even at nineteen, she is still not permitted to peruse this cabinet on her own—which of course didn't prevent her from making clandestine midnight visitations to it as a curious adolescent. Her father kept a close eye on the volume of the bottles, but his sight was beginning to dim. She was a clever girl and found that if she took only a few drops from each she could fill an empty bottle to the brim in a ghastly concoction of all of the liquors. It was appalling—premium London Dry gin to cheap sawdust liquor commingling in reeking, caustic pandemonium—and her father could not perceive as the liquor drained by degrees. Eventually, she realized that she would be unable to replenish the supply, and began to add water to the depleted bottles to conceal her petty pilfering. Eventually, she became too brazen, and one day as her father sipped from a pale glass of scotch.

"_Elizabeth, I must say that this is a rather remarkable brand of Scotch. One can drink as much as one likes and yet never become intoxicated."_

—But her consequential lack of knowledge of fine liqueurs makes her quite uncertain as to what would be appropriate to give him. Especially given that…

"Miss Swann, the brandy, if you please."

She gropes about the highest shelf where she knows the brandy is kept. Her fingers brush a thick blanket of dust coating one of the bottles. _Must be expensive. The kind of alcohol that men keep in their cabinets in case the king should come calling. It's a shame to use it on this…_

Beckett coughs. Not from illness, to be sure.

"Right. Er—right." She retrieves a glass, uncorks the bottle and pours. She offers it to him.

He makes no move to take it.

She further extends her arm, practically shoving the glass at his chest, mentally demanding _how have I bollucksed it up this time?_

Elizabeth meets his frosty blue eyes directly, for the first time. (A sharp shoulder tic). They turn toward the glass…which is smeared with dust, a film of the powder floating in the brandy.

"I'm sorry. I'm—I'll…wash this off."

He nods, looking bored. "Indeed." She thinks that the number of his words he chooses to use has an inverse proportion to how dangerous he seems. Normally, she is far more confident, but the man is truly unnerving her. Especially now that she make an effort to please him.

She steals a glance at Beckett. At Beckett's promisingly dark eyebrows. The child shouldn't display any traits which could not be ascribed to him or herself. Physically, at least. God forbid it should grow to be kind and compassionate—or worse, to display the naive moral idealism of its father. But she had at least a decade before she needs to worry about that. And by then, Beckett could be dead.

Elizabeth's last menstruation had been two months previous. That means that the child will perceived to be _at least_ a month premature. If she is to do this, she must act immediately. But that shouldn't be a problem. He'll probably run her into bed at soon as they utter their "I do"s. And then who knows what kind of perversions he'll inflict on her…whippings, urinating on her, sodomizing her and even worse acts that even her fantastic imagination cannot conceive of. She can bear it. And if she can play the perfect, pious wife for the next eight months, she may just allay any suspicion regarding her faithfulness and the child's paternity. She knocks back the dust-muffed brandy for fortitude—and chokes, spewing the saliva threaded fluid onto the floor. But that rancid, blistering flavor is burned to her mouth. She leans over, propping herself against the wall, spitting into the puddle again and again and again trying to flush it out of her mouth.

Elizabeth hears the scrape of boots striding across the floorboards towards her. Then the creak of the cabinet, a tinkling of bottles and liquor being poured into a glass.

She wipes her face with her sleeve and turns around. He takes a—you wouldn't call it a sip—more like a sampling of the brandy.

"Calvados."

"What?"

He shakes his head, as if dealing with the impertinent questions of an ignorant six-year-old.

"An apple brandy from the region of Lower Normandy. Generally, it is a very fine type of brandy."

She would feel relieved, if not for the _however_ dangling ominously in the air.

"However, _this_ particular Calvados is not only heavily cut with water, but from the flavors it tastes as if it were distilled in a Frenchman's chamberpot. Very middle class. Impressed by French names, yet with no eye for quality. I can just see it. Dismayed that he couldn't come up with the money for genuine Calvados, your father buys some from a cock-eyed peasant promising the same quality for half the francs. Well, he got what he paid for."

He pauses for her response, but she finds herself quite unable to formulate one. She wants to say that it was she who watered it down, but bites her tongue that impulse. And now that she must play the devoted wife, it seems little use to defend herself from his acrimony.

He rolls his eyes and motions to an armchair. "If you're too ill-bred for intelligent conversation, then you may as well listen as I explain terms."

"Terms? You talk as if I'm a freshly conquered territory."

"Are you not?"

Elizabeth hangs her head. Beckett takes a seat opposite her.

"Look up. Melancholy is so unbecoming in a lady. Now, you should be quite ingratiated to me, as I am offering you more than any lady of your station could rightly dream of. I offer you a title, and all of the privileges that it entails. My house and servants will be at your disposal; you will share the acquaintance of aristocratic ladies; and most importantly, you will have security for both your person and your reputation."

She shakes her head, "And what have I done to merit such charity. Surely a man of your political stature could attain a more auspicious match. One that will gain you more power, more money, better connections…I have nothing in that way to offer you."

She hears his breath catch, but he recovers himself quickly.

"It's simple really. Unlike most men of my class, I am not seeking a bride who will simply ensure the security of my pocketbook. Such brides come with the peril of powerful families. But these families are a double-edged sword: they can either be strong allies or formidable enemies depending on the capricious ebb and flow of their favor. To maintain this favor, I must treat their spoiled little daughter like a princess, (as women of her ilk believe that they're entitled to something just because five hundred years ago, some king aggrandized one of her ancestors for beating someone over the head with a rock). If I fail to indulge every one of her idle desires, I might find myself on the wrong side of their favor and then—well, you know how difficult it is to obtain a divorce. It would be much simpler to kill me. No, I have obtained sufficient power for myself so as not to be dependent on a _woman _to further my career. Instead I desire a wife who is beholden to _me_—a wife who will submit to _my_ will. I want a wife who will adorn my household without complaint because she knows that I am the source of all her privileges. Such things I cannot expect from those insipid society girls, but I can from an aggrandized middle class girl of some breeding. That is where you enter, Miss Swann. You have been educated in the manner of aristocratic ladies, despite your fathers indulgences, so you know how to behave in high company. Additionally, because of your situation, I find that you would be suitably indebted to me."

It is then that Elizabeth notices the semicircle of crescents her nails have delved in her palms.

"You will have to ask my father's permission."

"If I am to believe his doctor's judgment, the Governor is incapable even of controlling his bowels, leastways rendering a decision as to his daughter's marriage. No, I am afraid that the decision lies solely with you, and its consequences shall be your singular responsibility."

Elizabeth nods, eyes glass.

He rises. "Excellent. We shall marry Sunday."

"Sunday? But it's Tuesday." He begins to walk toward the entrance, not looking back for a moment. "Think of the scandal--the law! The betrothal must be announced at mass for at least three weeks before we can marry. And that can only be over-ridden by the governor and the ecclesiastical courts."

By now he's at the door. He turns to address her.

"Need I remind you that as your father finds himself indisposed, I am the acting governor? As for the church, I have bought God's favorable judgment for three hundred pounds and a .05 share in the molasses trade, so we shall encounter no obstacles there. Additionally, allow me to remind you that in order to secure your inheritance, you need to marry before you father dies, which will undoubtedly occur within the week. Thus, is behooves you to marry as soon as possible."

"What of the arrangements? You can't plan a wedding in five days. I will not have the time."

"That is very convenient, as I do not plan to burden you with planning the ceremony. I will have a dressmaker come to take your measurements on the morrow and that shall be the extent of your participation."

"Oh."

"Is something wrong?"

"No. No…I just…I never thought that my wedding would be like this. I thought—"

"What did you expect, Miss Swann? A heartfelt proposal on bended knee? A dulcet choir of song birds chirping "Love's a Gentle Gen'rous Passion"? This is no love-match, Miss Swann, this is a marriage of convenience. I advise you now, that if you are to marry me you should cast aside these childish fantasies and begin acting as an adult."

Despite herself, her thoughts dissolve in heavy tears and choking sobs.

Beckett is unmoved. "You are not the first girl to marry into the aristocracy whilst crying and you certainly won't be the last. The dressmaker will be here tomorrow. Please do not let her find you absent. And Miss Swann,"

"Yes?"

"Please clean up that mess you made in the drawing room _before _she arrives."

He shows himself out.

Cutler closes the door to his study and exhales sharply. _She doesn't know about the stocks. _Well, this renders his deception about the child unnecessary_—_then again, any knowledge which he possesses that she does not is an advantage and can be used to his purposes later. He had planned to feign ignorance about the child, banking on her devising some kind of subterfuge wherein she would marry him in order that she might claim him for the father. But this—this is perfect. The stocks were her leverage in the negotiations, but she believes herself to be without a bargaining chip. Cutler is in a most propitious position.

Granted, this means that he will be bound to the girl, as a divorce is nearly impossible to obtain. He hadn't been lying about that. Divorce is only attainable by Act of Parliament—and he has enough enemies in the House of Lords to prevent him from acquiring one. But he can tolerate her—if he can break her.

Cutler reflects on the unbroken Arabian stallion he acquired as a socially-advancing twenty year old. So entranced was he by the sheer power rippling in its robust frame that he approached the animal, hand outstretched, like a child in awe. This was the symbol of his dreams, his ambitions, the power he was so desperately amassing for himself. Encased in that equine frame was the essence of Cutler Beckett. Apparently, the horse was unaware of this mystical connection—it kicked him in the chest.

After two weeks in bed, moaning into the night and sobbing with frustration at the pain it caused him merely to breathe, he rose, possessed with the single-minded desire to break that animal to pieces.

He strolled out to the pasture, on the opposite side of the fence from where the horse was feeding from its trough. He then crushed an ash walking stick across its skull. Naturally, the horse went mad with a frenzy of bucking and whinnying. Cutler then ordered the terrified groom to tie the horse to a tree until its fit stopped. He then sat on the fence and with a blank face, mechanically pelted the horse with palm-sized rocks. Not hard throws, to be sure, as scars would have devalued the animal, but just enough to hurt. At first, the horse started violently at every blow, but after several hours, (and a large pile of rocks that had accumulated immediately around the horse) the stallion collapses to the ground, folding its legs beneath it, and took the rocks with little more than an anticipatory muscle twitch.

He then hopped off the fence, and as he stood triumphant over the animal he whispered, "You are mine."

Needless to say, after months of spurrings, whippings and the use of rather harsh, nasty-looking bits, that Arabian stallion was as gentle as a lamb.

He named it, "Conquis." French for conquered.

Cutler sits at his desk, ready to begin delegating the responsibilities for planning the ceremony. After all, company business cannot be superceded by something as trifling as a marriage. Despite himself, he grins, pleased at having secured an irrefutable claim to the Swann family fortune. It is then that a folded rectangle of weather-beaten paper in the center of his desk catches his. It is a letter. A letter addressed to Elizabeth Swann from a Mister Radcliffe in Nottingham.

He blanches, breaking the seal with trembling fingers.


	6. Escape Velocity

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church; which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee; (_Turning water into wine—you call that a miracle? People do that every day. If you add some grape juice and yeast it's called fermentation. Now, turning water into a harpsichord—that's commendable. Though I'm sure some of the religious significance would be lost. "And for his first miracle, he turned water into a harpsichord. And lo—he played Scarlatti." ) _and is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men (_Honourable? Oh no, Lord Beckett, I do not believe you received that memorandum. And why are they even mentioning St. Paul? Didn't he say that marriage is a second-rate alternative to virginity?) _: and therefore is not by any to be enterprised _(too late)_, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly _(check), _lightly_(check),_ or wantonly _(double-check), _ to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites _(Oh, I'm counting on that one),_ like brute beasts that have no understanding _(How naïve. The church hasn't counted on the idea that men can be enterprising, wanton and dishonourable in a deliberate, calculated fashion. My, do they have a lot to learn from Beckett.)_; but reverently (_nope_), discreetly (_nope)_, advisedly (_nope)_, soberly (_unfortunately)_, and in the fear of God _(The only things that he fears are creditors. The only thing I fear is him.)_; duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained _(Convenience)_.

First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, _(Already ahead of you on that stipulation)_ to be brought up in the fear of the Lord _(and its father)_, and to the praise of his holy Name.

Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin _(Last I checked, greed, avarice and murder were still sins)_, and to avoid fornication _(Psht. I don't care. After tonight, the more whores he fornicates with, the less he'll try to pry into my orifices)_; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body _(wait—the _member _of_ _Christ's body_. _Oh, I'm really too old for such childishness)_.

Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society _(ha)_, help _(ha)_, and comfort _(oh, I'm laughing so hard my sides will just BURST)_, that the one ought to have of the other _(yes, he will have of me all that he desires, with my consent or not)_, both in prosperity and adversity _(I'm about to inherit both at once, ironically). _ Into which holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined. Therefore if any man can shew any just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace."

"_EGO SUM EVERTO MAMMON. SI ILLA DUOS MATRIMONIUM, EGO MOS VOMICA IS VILLA PER FAMES, PESTILENCIA, DYSENTARY QUOD LIVENCIA IN SUUM…ER, NAUGHTY BITS!" _The voice bellows with the concussive thunder of a bass drum booming _sforzando_. Plaster dust rains from the rafters, and the volume echoes through vibrating flagstones.

When the bellowing ceases, the congregation falls into anxious silence. The only discernable noise is the lazy droning of flies hanging like coal smoke over the pews.

"W-wot did 'e say?" a voice pipes.

The priest is nowhere in sight—vanished(!) it seems—except for a shivering black lump of linen huddled under the altar. Apparently, mad with fear, the old prelate pulled the cassock and surplice over his head, leaving a skinny pair of shriveled flesh-saggy legs poking out like sprouts out of a blighted potato.

"H-h-he said…" the old man's voice has swiveled to a dangerously shrill pitch. He coughs, which evens the pitch of his voice, but does not infuse enough courage in him to emerge from the protective cassock. The cassock bristles, "He said that he is the demon Mammon. And this if this marriage is allowed to proceed, he will curse this village with famine, pestilence, dysentery and lice on your, erm…naughty bits?"

"_PRECISELY!" _

The congregation collapses into chaos and breaks onto the door in a flood, each pushing and shoving, desperate to get himself out. Every man for himself!—unfortunately the sheer volume of the press clogs the exit and prevents anyone from escaping. The large double doors are deceptively sized. Yes, they are twenty feet tall, but when thrown open they are less then two meters wide, so that two men could not walk abreast to the outside. Additionally, there was the added complication that one door had been bolted closed during renovations.

For a moment, the clamor ebbs, as the gentle folk of Port Royal remember themselves and their social graces, and slowly people begin to trickle out in a courteous, orderly fashion.

"WOT'RE YA WAITIN' FOR!? 'E'S GARN TER GIVE US CRABS!" arises from the crowd, re-invigorating the hysteria, shoving the tidal wave of congregants against the door—with the Priest bringing up the rear, shouting "Two weeks from purgatory for letting the priest out first!"

Eventually, the second of the double door snaps off its hinges and crashes, spilling the mob into the street.

"Mercer" Beckett says, not quite in a calling volume, but Mercer materializes—just behind Elizabeth. She gasps. _That man needs to learn to announce his presence._

"I suspect that the ignorant townsfolk are going to have a riot. Make sure that the house is well secured."

Mercer nods and flies from the church. Must have picked up that non-verbalization habit from his master.

"And what of the demon?" Elizabeth demands. Surely, she holds no great affection for Mercer, but even she has the grace to admit that there are times when it is no bad thing to have an assassin on hand, and as it stands Elizabeth and Beckett are quite alone in the little church, having even been abandoned by God's servant.

Beckett pauses at this, and rubs the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger as if staving off a massive headache.

"Since we have already established your lack of proper reasoning faculties, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you entertain the superstitious notions of country simpletons."

"_OI! INSULTIN A LADY'S NOT GOING T'MAKE THAT PYGMY PRICK OF YOURS ANY BIGGER, MATE._"

Beckett smiles. "Right. A demon, Miss Swann? One with a command of bad Latin _and _bad English. Astonishing."

"Given the acoustics of the building," he wanders toward the pulpit, searching. "If someone shouted from a focal point in the building the sound should reverberate in such a fashion as to elude localization, meaning, Miss Swann, that we would be unable to pinpoint the origin of the voice if the speaker were located right—here."

A shadow leaps from the rafters, startling Beckett backward.

"Jack!" Elizabeth shouts, eyes bright.

"Jack Sparrow. I might have known."

"Well then y'should've said something, eh? Otherwise someone might think that yer just saying that you knew now that you know, when in the first place you hadn't the foggiest, which I'm supposing you didn't as I've yet to be accosted by a pack of marines y've got stuffed in those over-starched pockets of yours. Course I'd give 'em a decent fight, swash some buckles, but through my superior wit and guile I would best said marines and escape unharmed with the bonny lass—and quite probably that fat purse 'f yours, so you may as well just hand 'er over and we can cut out those niggling middle bits."

Beckett cracks a smile—a smile that is decisively _not_ indicative of mirth. "Mr. Sparrow, when I branded you and left you in Dakar, I thought that I had finally inculcated some sense into you. I thought that perhaps I had tempered your brash idealism and shown you your place in this competitive, entrepreneurial world that has little sympathy for romanticism. I believed that either you would die, and thus be spared this harsh reality, or, quite miraculously, you would survive and, humbled by your disastrous foray into abolitionism, you would grow up and face the world like a man. I did you a charity Mr. Sparrow, and had I known that you would spurn the lesson and become a drunken, debauched and probably syphilitic pirate, I would have just killed you straight off."

Jack grins, "Now thassa kinda charity you can write off from your taxes, mate."

"I am not your mate."

"Nah, yer not. 'M only mates with respectable thieves. Now, when you left me dyin of infection in that backwater port, you forgot one thing."

"That you're Jack Sparrow?" Clearly Beckett had heard the punchline before.

"No. Well, _technically_ yes. But also, yer doctor was a quack cos all I had was a hangover."

Beckett's carotid thrusts upward, pulsing furiously. No doubt making plans as to maiming and torturing his former ship's doctor. Not that he is going to start shouting and cursing, because Beckett's simply not the shouting cursing type. In fact, he's most dangerous at his quietest, because he's suppressing the urge to yell and funneling it into plans for your destruction.

"Well Becky, much 's I'm enjoyin this catchin up between us two, I really must be going. Y'know, people t'rob, places to plunder. Now, if you'll just hand over the bird, I'll be on me merry way."

"So arrogant," Beckett takes measured steps toward Jack, "And so unlike I remember you. The Jack Sparrow that I recall was intent to please, effusively deferential to his superiors. You probably even had designs on becoming a salaried director, rather than just some lowly sub-contractor. But you must have known it was all for naught. You served us well as a merchant Captain, indeed, but to make the low-born son of a Portsmouth whore a meaningful part of the company? Suicide—" Beckett's hand flutters to his pocket.

"Look out!" Elizabeth shrieks, as the iron barrel peeks over his pocket.

With the pistol pointed at his guts, Jack draws his saber and parries the muzzle away. _Too late!_

Jack hisses, clutching his chest in his hands.

"No!" Elizabeth gapes in horror, desperate to tend to Jack, but Beckett pins her down with a glare, as if to say _You have no more heroes to stand between yourself and I, so take care not to cross me._

"Swashbuckling, and all such nonsense is a relic of the past," Beckett re-assumes his didacticism, "And in the face of superior technology I fear that your find yourself wanting."

Beckett advances, emptying a pinch of black powder into the muzzle and carefully dropping a smooth musket ball in after it.

"Gonna finish me off then, Becky?"

"Well, you're Captain Jack Sparrow, so I shan't be taking my chances."

Suddenly, Jack jams his elbow into Beckett's soft, slightly-rounded paunch, knocking the man backward onto the flagstones gasping for air.

Jack picks up Beckett's pistol from the ground and trains it on the squirming body of the other man.

Beckett stills, lying prostrate, but doesn't say a word. It seems neither begging for his life, nor making some impetuous dare for Jack to shoot him would become him.

"Oh yeah, forgot t'tell you. 'M an actor as well. Funniest rendering 'f MacBeth they've ever seen."

It strikes Elizabeth that there is nothing funny about MacBeth—simultaneously it strikes her that if anyone were to find anything comical about him, it would be Jack.

"Now, I could shoot you, but 've never had much love for pistols," to illustrate, he tips the muzzle down, letting the powder and ball spill out of gun, "they don't have 's much pizzazz as a sword. They lack a certain _swishy_ quality. But since I doubt I'll get such swishyness from such a soft, well-fed rat as yerself, 'd suggest you run as fast as those short legs'll carry you before I get it in me head to do me some one-sided swishing on yer person, eh?"

Beckett, torn between his desire not to be vivisected on the church floor, and his general aversion to taking the one-down from _anybody_, let alone a pirate, pauses, then wriggles to his feet and scampers out of the church. Years later, when enquiring minds asked after the incident, Beckett would be known to say, "I fought him with a remarkable display of swordsmanship, but he violated the rules of engagement and pulled a pistol on me. You can always trust pirates to cheat."

Elizabeth leaps at Jack, embracing him from the side as tightly as her encircling arms can muster. In this moment she feels as if she can't be close enough to him.

"Jack! I knew you'd come. I knew it. I knew you wouldn't leave me to marry him. Oh Jack!"

She buries her face in his frock coat, and inhales deeply. Inhales the rum, dirt, grime—all the sour foulness of a tramp, except for the salty undercurrent that is sweat and the sea and Jack and in any other state of mind this would be rank, but relief, and knowing that it's Jack makes it so welcome.

She squeezes harder and he gasps, saber and pistol clattering to the ground.

"Sorry," she releases him. Reluctantly. As if he were in danger of de-materializing if she stops touching him.

"'s'all right. Just mind the lungs."

He stoops and gathers his saber and Beckett's pistol. Sheathing the former, and neatly stuffing the latter into his pocket.

"I thought you said that you don't like pistols?"

"Course I don't," he scowls as if she's censured his honor, "But I do like not dying." He grins, "Life's full 'f compromises."

"Jack I—"

"Shh." He cocks his head like a dog. "You hear that?" he whispers. In the silence, a distant din howls from the distance, growing gradually louder. It must be getting closer.

"Seems the townsfolk have fired-up the torches and 're comin to find Mammon. We'd better be going."

"Going!?" Immediately she realizes how silly the question is. He can't just save her now, marry her at the church door on Tuesday and have her settled into her normal life in Port Royal by Friday. No. A life with Jack means abandoning her home. But her home is sick. Port Royal has been infected by the powerful influence of the East India Company with Cutler Beckett at the helm of affairs. He hasn't been deposed, merely humiliated, and it is a sure bet that he will not take it too lightly. But there's also her father, bedridden and in need of her care. She can't just leave him. –But he'll be dead before the month's close, and then where will she be? She has no other option.

"Yes goin. 're y'comin?"

"Yes." No hesitation.

"Then let's not loiter like whores on a day-shift, eh?"

He grabs her arm and hurries her out the door at a pace her corset vehemently protests.

She inhales shallow, spasmodically, as if asthmatic and pulls the voluminous wedding gown off over her head.

"Knife," she sputters, hyperventilating.

"Ah." With surgical precision, he cuts the corset down the middle. The cool blade slides against her breasts through the thin cotton shift. Despite the adverse circumstances, it sets her loins aflame. He discards the corset on the road. She's afraid to leave such evidence directly in the path of the mob, but all thought of protest is cut off as Jack drags her on.

A dot composed of hundreds of torches glows orange in the distance, dancing as if one united flame.

They run and sprint and open-mouthed sucking in air begging for the energy to push on through legs on fire and chest tight and ache of stitches.

"Jack…the docks…are…that…"

"I know" a heavy pant, "We're not goin t'the docks."

He stops short at a sheer cliff face. She's fallen from higher, to be sure, but this is at least twenty feet up.

He grimaces. "The tide's taken the longboat. The _Pearl's _anchored about 300 meters out. When y'jump, keep your feet together, arms at yer sides."

Elizabeth can't respond except to gape in horror.

"D'you trust me?"

"No."

"S'rry then, Bess." He pushes her into the roiling black sea, and frozen in panic she falls in flat on her stomach with a half-screamed, half-drowned "_oof_!"

A few seconds after she surfaces she hears a splash behind her.

"Jack!"

He begins swimming in _what she hopes_ is the direction of the _Pearl_.

"No time for rebukes now. Just swim."

And she does, following as close behind as she can, but she's slow on the breast-stroke, and the fastest she can swim is with a flapping rendition of a scissor kick, but even that can't match Jack's speed in the water.

Elizabeth falls behind and loses sight of him behind the black glass hills of sea.

"Jack! Jack!" she screams, her view obscured by the swells. For the eighth time in her life she thinks she's going to die. But not by something glorious like undead pirates or sea monsters, but by something as mundane as drowning. Drowning! That simply won't become her. She has survived all that Hell itself has thrown at her and she will not take this sitting down…floating…down. Whatever!

"Jack!"

"Over 'ere love." The sound is coming from up and left, and of course Jack is warming himself on the quarterdeck, while she slops around like a drowning rat in the sea.

They hoist her up, and Jack wraps a course blanket around her shoulders.

She slaps him.

"I deserved that."

He slaps her back. Not hard enough to hurt her, just enough to drum into her the fact that he has slapped her.

"And you deserved _that._"

Elizabeth knows why he does it. And strangely enough her hurt is overcome by a flood of relief, because she knows that this slap signals the end of an argument rather than the climax.

The crew, as a collective, pulses with indecisive energy, torn between throwing the lady into the brig for slapping the captain, and throwing the captain into the brig for slapping a lady.

Jack seems to sense the crew's suppressed energy. "Easy boys. Disagreements arose, ensued, have been overcome. And what are all 'f you doing awake at this hour? Should be passed out drunk er something."

"Aye, Cap'n," Pintel croaks. The crew rushes to obey an order—for once.

"Oi!—_first_, raise anchor and make ready to sale, _then_ we'll drink 'rselves t'vomiting. 'Cept for whoever's on watch." A muffled groan rises from a handful of crewman, but for the most part is drowned out by the cheer, welcoming the impending binge.

Elizabeth leans against the rail, and watches Port Royal sink into the distance. A column of smoke and fire rises from where she guesses the church must have been, illuminating the outline of her home. She knows that the only way she'll return would be in chains, neck primed for the noose. After twenty years, she has yet to learn all of its secrets. Then she imagines how vast the world must be. If you can spend a lifetime learning a town, imagine the wonders of the rest of the Earth. You just scratch and see what's underneath.

Jack's arms snake around her waist. The ghost of an instinct tells her to pull away, but there's nothing keeping her from him. Not polite society, not her father, not even Will.

_When you're treading water, you'll cling to anything you think might keep you from drowning._ As quickly as she thinks it, she buries it.

Leaning into his warmth, she imagines the rest of her life in this new context. Rootless, except for Jack. Killing, robbing, fighting, running. You can run from something, but still be running toward something else. Look forward, never back (because there might be someone chasing you.) She wonders if she can trust Jack to be her constant in a world of neverending, cascading variables—and decides that it would be better pondered at a later date. Maybe when she re-visits the notion, she will have learned to mingle with the flow.

That's why when he whispers that it's bed-time there's an offer hanging implicit in the air. One that she neatly plucks out.

It's all right now. That precious net of membrane between her thighs has been broken. The one she had saved for God as a child, and for Will as a woman. She's squandered her maidenhead, so there's nothing to keep sacred anymore. It's gone. There's no blood to stain the sheets, to make her lover pause awkwardly. (No blood to make him weep buckets, convinced that he has damaged her irreparably. _No, Will, it's fine. That's how you can tell that I'm pure and able to marry._ Then he cries more because there's no way for her to tell that he has been pure for her. Then having to explain that that's God's way of saying that it's all right for men to carouse when they're young so that they can be experienced for their wives—at least that's what her uncle told her. And this is making even less sense of the situation, isn't it?) Jack won't treat her like a whisp of porcelain. Jack knows she's made of stronger stuff. And most importantly, Jack can't seed her. Or can he?

"Jack?"

"Yes, love?"

"Can you seed a woman who is already seeded?"

"And why, I pray, would y'want t'know?"

No lies. She's been locked up with a molding truth for too long, and it's a relief to air it out. Even if he's too disgusted by the idea of making love to a pregnant woman.

"Because I'm quick with child."

His shoulders relax, and he smiles. This must be good news to him. "No love. Once there's a tenant, there's no more vacancy."

He strips. She strips out of the little clothing she has left. She lays on her back and unfolds her legs like dusty book covers.

Jack frowns, "'s this how dear William took you? A shame, that. I thought the boy was more gracious."

From her understanding of the Story of Lilith, God ordained that when men and women copulate the man should be facing the Earth and Women should be facing heaven. That was her sum total of sexual instruction. Perhaps there is more to it.

He sits upright beside her and rests his palm on her belly, "Since one of me worries has been averted, least for nine months time, I can give you full instruction on how responsive your body can be under a more dexterous pair 'f hands."

To illustrate, he traces his fingertips down the curve of her neck. She shudders when they brush the base, and everything from navel to thighs has already begun to throb in a steady pulse, so loud like drumming in the silent cabin.

Further they drift, fluttering for a moment on her collarbone, but she's already anticipating the feel of them on her breast. He has such rough fingers, could they hurt her more sensitive n—_No_. Most certainly not. Even the roughest hands can be whisper-soft with the correct application of pressure. He teases her, but now that seems part of the game. Enticing, promising, until the ache builds into a sort of agitated passion—then he'll tease a little longer.

His index finger swirls lazy circles on the outer rim of her right nipple. But she can feel the exquisite sting of it all over her body. The crimson buds reach out, stretching blindly for something tactile.

Without warning, his palm rubs against the tip. She arches off the bed.

"T-too much," she blurts, incoherent. She feels like any touch, anywhere would strike lightning in her nerves. In a good way, and in a terrible, painful way.

"Shh," he eases her down, kissing her worry-crinkled forehead "You're just a wee bit over-sensitized."

"Wha—is—is there something wrong with me?" Frustration, fear and anxiety ball-up in her chest and she's ready to sob.

"No, love. It's me own fault. 'M settin the pace too fast."

_Too fast!?_

Jack bends down, and kisses the frustration from her lips. He tastes surprisingly sweet. Herb sweet. _Must have been chewing licorice_. Their tongues intermingle in a graceful rhythm, and gradually the anxiety that had edged her pleasure sublimates under the warmth of his mouth and his breath brushing her soft and simultaneously stimulating.

He breaks the kiss, but his lips find her ears and neck. Just his moustache grazing her neck ignites previously unchecked eroticism in her flesh.

Despite her lack of practical experience, or even scholarly knowledge on the subject, her body seems to know the primordial rhythms of sexuality.

Elizabeth feels as if her nether regions have been magnetized, ready to cling to anything that promises pressure, penetration. Jack absently rests his hand on the bed between her legs and that is enough to make hips her inch down the bed, grinding against his wrist.

He withdraws his hand, and she most certainly does not suppress the disappointed moan.

"Oh, Bess." Jack studies the slick trail passion painted on his wrist. He licks it. She's going to erupt. Tentatively, he dips his fingers into the epicenter of her needs. "You're wet as the flood, little Missy. I should build me an ark."

"Well you had better fuck me first!" She's horrified at her own outburst. Jack on the other hand looks like control's been wrested from him, and the best description of his self-control is a man wrestling a lion and Elizabeth doesn't blame him because just the utterance of "fuck" charges her with erotic energy stemming from the very forbiddenness of the word of the thought of the act, that fucking isn't the polite consummation of love but the frenetic satiation of lust.

Jack's eyes darken to shadows in heavy hollows, "Aye" he whispers hoarse and shaky, no hint of cheekiness. Just something raw that both frightens and excites her in its intensity, where want transforms into need because somehow it's gratifying, this change in the game, where he's not controlling her, but the mutual commingling of desire makes them masters of the other's passion and slaves to their own in synergistic tug-of-wars of power and it's all fancy words orbiting an iron core where the sordid truth really is just that it's a powerful feeling to be needed and to supercede the ego in a man's control and reducing him to nothing but the overwhelming need for your sex.

His thumb massages her engorged clit, making her legs shake uncontrollably with every roll of the pebble against her pubis and suddenly she's stretched open as two fingers delve into her sodden cunt, curving inward toward her belly massaging the spot deep inside of her that sets her abuzz from the inside out.

As suddenly as they probed into her, the fingers slide out.

She dry-weeps of frustration when he takes lays beside her.

"Is it over?" she demands.

"Just get on top of me."

"What?"

"Straddle my hips,"

Tentatively, she climbs on top of him his prick nestles lengthwise between her lips. From this angle it seems that penetration is impossible.

She feels oddly exposed at this angle, with her body erected before his eyes. It makes her feel naked—well, yes of course she's naked, but it's as if all of her insecurities have been laid bare and she can't just hide beneath the enveloping body of a man drumming her into the pit of a mattress.

She thought she had overcome her shyness about being naked in full view of a man with Will. But now she realizes how comfortable it was with Will, knowing that he's not comparing her to a library of lovers cross-referenced in his mind. But with Jack, he's known women. Hundreds. Enough to fill Port Royal. What has she to offer that he hasn't had three score and ten times before?

In this position, it's as if she's expected to direct the proceedings, and she simply does not possess the confidence or experience to do so.

"What next?"

A sharp upward thrust of his hips is his answer, blunt and hot, into her very viscera and all the world collapses unthinking into an infinitely small, infinitely dense pulsating center of gravitational attraction and pleasure in sex isn't a thing made of matter, but a warm wave of energy rippling down her belly, up her legs coalescing around his cock—if it's a wave, she takes it like she takes the ocean, riding up its peaks and down its valleys until she's her hips crashing onto Jack's cock furious as the surf in a hurricane and his head thrown back and his ornaments jangling and the sweat slick sliding between them like dolphins feel, and all at once the sea inside rears up and she throws the sum total of her body, her heart and her soul onto Jack—

"_Awh_!" throat, face and vagina tighten infinitely taut—and the waters recede.

Elizabeth collapses onto him, and from a light nudge to her hip, takes the hint to disembark.

She rolls over, flat on her back, bathed in sweat and boundless love.

"I love you, Jack," she whispers to the ceiling planks.

He turns on his side, placing his flat palm just below her belly button.

A thick, black flood bleeds out of her vagina, and floating on its surface, a crinkled lump no larger than a raisin wailing like a baby—

"Would you like your eggs scrambled, sweet Lizzie?" he whispers.

She shoots up like a spring and shrieks. But the blood is gone, and so is Jack—and she's in her own bed, and Cook is shouting upstairs in her jolly Scottish burr how mistress would like her eggs.

Elizabeth's chest tightens with sobs and she beats her pillow until feathers fly out of the seams and she's tangled in her bed sheets from the exertion.

_--But maybe it's prophetic. _The tears choke off. She's never had so detailed a dream. It must be a divine intimation of what's to comeShe can feel it. Jack's coming!

Knocking on the door, "Your eggs, Mistress?"

"Scr—Sunny side up."


End file.
